What do You Guys feel about Piracy in Terms of Ethics?

[John_Smith]

There's absolutely nothing morally or ethically wrong with making unauthorized copies of data. The entire idea of "intellectual property" is just a fantasy that has been imposed onto reality by greedy corporations that lobby governments in order to make stupid rules that get them more money. When you actually think about it, piracy isn't theft, because the thing that makes theft morally wrong is the fact that you just deprived someone of their property which belonged to them. But when you "pirate" something, the original creator still has the data, it doesn't affect them in any way, they're completely oblivious to the supposed "theft" that just took place. Think of it this way: you've probably heard the phrase "you wouldn't download a car", but if you had the capability to go up to someone's bugatti, magically make a perfect clone of it, and drive off in the clone, you wouldn't do that? You haven't slighted anyone in any way. And the number of people in this thread talking about how they pirate games in order to try them and then pay for them afterwards disproves the argument that creators wouldn't have an economic incentive to make things if these dumb laws didn't exist, most people will still pay money purely out of appreciation for the craft and wanting to support those who made it.

 

[peinpeko]

If the game costs 60 bucks and the game play feels like 0 bucks we sail. Imo only elden ring and baldur's gate 3 are worth 60. Indie games are only ones you should not pirate if you can buy them.

 

[Meowskateer]

Ethically speaking? It's wrong, always, full stop.

But I feel like it's similar to, like, "smoking is bad." Personally, I don't smoke. But even those who do agree, it's bad but people still do it. And that doesn't change anything, smoking is still bad.

The thing that separates smoking from Piracy from smoking is "smoking only hurt yourself." Which isn't even true, there's been many cases where people get second hand harm.

"Piracy hurts the creator." It can, yes. If 80% of people who consume the product is pirating it, it will make it impossible for the creator to make more.

But here's the problem with touhou products: they're gatekept. Not extremely hard, but they are. It's extremely difficult for anyone outside of Japan to get their hands on the games, steam is the easiest place and even though steam was created specifically to combat priacy, it's still hard to find the official steam page to find them.

Despite this, I do still feel a tinge of guilt when I download these games. The solution imo is to buy official merchandise first hand, that way the creator is still making profit they deserve.

 

[cheezie]

Piracy for me when I was younger was mostly out of not understanding how content is made and how time consuming it is to make a masterpiece which has hundreds if not thousands of hours put into it.

But when people ask me why I pirate in recent times, it's mostly because of geoblocks and restrictions. One notable example for me is Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, the game is not available in my region of purchase and is a considerable barrier that doesn't let me purchase the game through the store. Other reasons could be unfair localised pricings, and outright broken or unenjoyable experiences (I'm looking at you, Worms World Party...).
When companies are limiting me from getting an experience, even if I want to pay for said experience, then it resorts me into finding other ways to enjoy it.

My gripes are more technical than ethical as many people in the thread are more interested in. But morally, I believe piracy is wrong and shall not really be anyone's first option if getting their experiences legally is much more sound and easy.

 

[cheezie]

Ethically speaking? It's wrong, always, full stop.

But I feel like it's similar to, like, "smoking is bad." Personally, I don't smoke. But even those who do agree, it's bad but people still do it. And that doesn't change anything, smoking is still bad.

The thing that separates smoking from Piracy from smoking is "smoking only hurt yourself." Which isn't even true, there's been many cases where people get second hand harm.

"Piracy hurts the creator." It can, yes. If 80% of people who consume the product is pirating it, it will make it impossible for the creator to make more.

But here's the problem with touhou products: they're gatekept. Not extremely hard, but they are. It's extremely difficult for anyone outside of Japan to get their hands on the games, steam is the easiest place and even though steam was created specifically to combat priacy, it's still hard to find the official steam page to find them.

Despite this, I do still feel a tinge of guilt when I download these games. The solution imo is to buy official merchandise first hand, that way the creator is still making profit they deserve.

That's why many platforms exist to support creators, even some that I believe is a lot more effective, especially ones with lower than 30% commission fee that Steam takes from each sale.
The main reason why I wasn't aware of the Touhou Project and its community was because of how underground it seemed to me. Sometimes I even wish I knew about Touhou much earlier in my life, I learnt about it from a friend who had a profile picture of Tewi and I asked "what's that pfp?" And that's how I learnt about the project.

 

[Meowskateer]

That's why many platforms exist to support creators, even some that I believe is a lot more effective, especially ones with lower than 30% commission fee that Steam takes from each sale.
The main reason why I wasn't aware of the Touhou Project and its community was because of how underground it seemed to me. Sometimes I even wish I knew about Touhou much earlier in my life, I learnt about it from a friend who had a profile picture of Tewi and I asked "what's that pfp?" And that's how I learnt about the project.

This make me want to start a "What was your introduction to touhou" thread lol

 

[Witch Hunter Siegfried]

Since we're on a website that's basically a Touhou Pirate website, I would like to read what are your opinion about piracy.

For me, back then I didn't really care that much and pirated Touhou games with my hearts content, but nowadays I'm somewhat conflicted about it, maybe parts of me says that it's mean to not give money to an indie developer. But hot damn, the prices of the games here on Steam from where I'm from makes outright impossible (they are like 14 bucks more or so from where I'm from)! So, I want to support ZUN, but the prices are the barrier of doing that.

In Touhou's case, if the games were in English (Which Zun could easily afford and would probably make him a fair bit more money TBH, hell most Doujinn games are released in English for that reason) and didn't require screwing with patches it'd be less of an issue, but downloading the games here is free and easier (IE they're pre-patched)

 

[TFT]

but downloading the games here is free and easier

In the eternal words of GabeN: "Piracy is a service problem"
It makes takedowns on anime and manga all the more painful. There is no real alternative. Your options are: pay out the nose for an inferior product, or nothing because it's not sold for any number of reasons (region locking, no translations, no digital copies, limited time release)
For Touhou you need patches for fantranslations, and not all of them are on steam. If you're here for either you might as well pirate them altogether.

 

[Ran Enjoyer]

Earlier I mentioned the problem of dead games when the PSP/Vita shops shut down and there's no proper emulators.
It's also true of the DS and 3DS. Apparently the Switch isn't backwards compatible and a lot of them weren't rereleased so there's a lot of dungeon crawlers, even some bigger ones like the later EOs that are only available on the seven seas.
Still not sure how you get an emulator working with Demon Gaze 2 either.